Montecito and Northwood, looking southwest
Day 44
Neighborhoods Covered: Glen Park, Sunnyside, Westwood, Ingleside, and a slice of the 'Loin
Streets Completed: Montecito, Eastwood, Westwood, Northwood, Southwood, Greenwood, Wildwood, (wait for it...) Homewood, Pizarro, San Ramon
South of the Mission/Glen Park/Bernal Heights and east of the Sunset, San Francisco becomes an utter mystery to me. The city goes on quite a bit farther south from this unofficial line of demarcation, but I couldn't really begin to tell you what's there, other than a few landmarks like City College and Monster Park (formerly 3-Com Park, formerly Candlestick Park, now perhaps the only NFL stadium that sounds like it's actually some sort of highly specific Disneyland).
There are no doubt hundreds of San Franciscans who live in the southernmost part of the city rolling their eyes at that last paragraph and wishing to remind people like me that SF doesn't end where 280 begins. All very valid: our lovely city is more than the Financial District and places tourists would actually go. So on Saturday afternoon I took BART to Glen Park and pointed myself south.
My plan was to take Monterey down to the foot of Mount Davidson, head briefly west, and then pop north again on Joost. The first part of that plan came to pass, somewhat unexcitingly, but then I was drawn astray.
But first, a few notes on Monterey Boulevard.
Monterey cuts through several mini neighborhoods, starting in Glen Park, winding through the totally inaptly named Sunnyside (sorry, but naming a region of SF Sunnyside pretty much guarantees that it'll be socked in by fog for most of the year) and down to what may or may not officially be considered Westwood (slash St. Francis Wood Jr.). It is not, I'm sorry to say, an especially lovely street, though it's a bit more interesting than you might think. And when I say "interesting," I mean it in both the sincere sense and in the "I really want to call [whatever] hideous/offensive/painfully ugly/beyond description, but I shall exercise restraint and instead call it interesting" sense. As in, you know, "My, what an...INTERESTING sweater." That kind of interesting.
Anyway, Monterey has your run-of-the-mill interesting, largely in the form of the Sunnyside Conservatory, which looks like it was once really lovely and is now vaguely spooky and fascinating for being a bit ramshackle, utterly devoid of windows, and run riot with plants and trees. It's up a few steps from the road, and is the sort of thing you would never see were you driving past (unless you happened to be intently looking at the side of the street the whole time, in which case you should not be driving, or at least not driving in front of me). According to the placard near the front gate, the Conservatory is the beneficiary of some Parks Department bond funds and is scheduled for a fix-up this year. I hope--likely in vain--that they leave the tree bursting through the back windows.
The arch "interesting" aspect of Monterey Boulevard is its residential architecture, which is, um, something else. There are, to be fair, many buildings that are fairly pleasant, if unremarkable, and there are plenty of boring apartments that were clearly products of the 70s. And then there are the hybrids: older buildings that are quite nice if you don't look at all of the stories at the same time, because taking in the whole enchilada means you'll see what looks like a normal home on the top two floors being attacked by some sort of circa-1983 "embellishment" (I use the term loosely) on the ground floor, or vice versa. You'd almost think it had been an accident if it didn't keep happening. Note to building owners here: Edwardian and Miami Vice do not play well together.
It was while contemplating this collective architectural mess that I came to the intersection of Monterey and Montecito. Due quite possibly to laziness--Montecito went downhill, where anything toward Mt. Davidson would go, yes, uphill--but also to the siren song of the cottage-like house on the corner, I decided to alter my course.
And, well, holy hell if I didn't walk straight into some other time and place altogether. It was almost as if someone had pulled down a new scenery scrim the moment I crossed Monterey, and all of the sudden here I was in Middle America, or some British suburb somewhere, or a California town from many miles and many years ago. I was delighted.
Where Montecito hit Northwood, I sat on a bench in a mini park and took the photo above (which actually shows Ingleside, not Westwood, and therefore doesn't do the latter neighborhood justice). I could hear geese honking somewhere, the whir of BART in the distance, what sounded like skeet shooting (or, who knows, plain old shooting) somewhere far off. As I walked the looping streets of the neighborhood, I passed dog walkers, people unloading kids and gardening supplies from their cars, three young girls in bikinis having a water balloon fight, a guy pulling weeds from his front yard. The houses were adorable, the gardens in front of them crazy riots of spring growth and color. There were porches! There were driveways! There were front yards! I fell crazily in love.
It helped that, over the course of the hour or so I spent gamboling about in Westwood, what had been a cloudy and cool day turned bright blue and warm. By the time I finally finished as much as my legs would allow in this little enclave and headed out to Ocean Avenue, I was on a serious (and somewhat insane) natural high. Only as I started to fatigue while walking toward the Balboa Park station did I come down a bit.
But not for long: as I trudged over the 280 overpass, I thought I heard my name, and--deus ex machina!--I turned to see Dana and Brad waiting at the light. They'd been at a barbecue in Ingleside, had just been talking about how my project would require me to walk ignoble stretches like this particular bit of Ocean, and voila, there I appeared.
And voila! There I got into Brad's car just in time for the light to change and gratefully accepted a ride home, bubbling the whole way.
Neighborhoods Covered: Glen Park, Sunnyside, Westwood, Ingleside, and a slice of the 'Loin
Streets Completed: Montecito, Eastwood, Westwood, Northwood, Southwood, Greenwood, Wildwood, (wait for it...) Homewood, Pizarro, San Ramon
South of the Mission/Glen Park/Bernal Heights and east of the Sunset, San Francisco becomes an utter mystery to me. The city goes on quite a bit farther south from this unofficial line of demarcation, but I couldn't really begin to tell you what's there, other than a few landmarks like City College and Monster Park (formerly 3-Com Park, formerly Candlestick Park, now perhaps the only NFL stadium that sounds like it's actually some sort of highly specific Disneyland).
There are no doubt hundreds of San Franciscans who live in the southernmost part of the city rolling their eyes at that last paragraph and wishing to remind people like me that SF doesn't end where 280 begins. All very valid: our lovely city is more than the Financial District and places tourists would actually go. So on Saturday afternoon I took BART to Glen Park and pointed myself south.
My plan was to take Monterey down to the foot of Mount Davidson, head briefly west, and then pop north again on Joost. The first part of that plan came to pass, somewhat unexcitingly, but then I was drawn astray.
But first, a few notes on Monterey Boulevard.
Monterey cuts through several mini neighborhoods, starting in Glen Park, winding through the totally inaptly named Sunnyside (sorry, but naming a region of SF Sunnyside pretty much guarantees that it'll be socked in by fog for most of the year) and down to what may or may not officially be considered Westwood (slash St. Francis Wood Jr.). It is not, I'm sorry to say, an especially lovely street, though it's a bit more interesting than you might think. And when I say "interesting," I mean it in both the sincere sense and in the "I really want to call [whatever] hideous/offensive/painfully ugly/beyond description, but I shall exercise restraint and instead call it interesting" sense. As in, you know, "My, what an...INTERESTING sweater." That kind of interesting.
Anyway, Monterey has your run-of-the-mill interesting, largely in the form of the Sunnyside Conservatory, which looks like it was once really lovely and is now vaguely spooky and fascinating for being a bit ramshackle, utterly devoid of windows, and run riot with plants and trees. It's up a few steps from the road, and is the sort of thing you would never see were you driving past (unless you happened to be intently looking at the side of the street the whole time, in which case you should not be driving, or at least not driving in front of me). According to the placard near the front gate, the Conservatory is the beneficiary of some Parks Department bond funds and is scheduled for a fix-up this year. I hope--likely in vain--that they leave the tree bursting through the back windows.
The arch "interesting" aspect of Monterey Boulevard is its residential architecture, which is, um, something else. There are, to be fair, many buildings that are fairly pleasant, if unremarkable, and there are plenty of boring apartments that were clearly products of the 70s. And then there are the hybrids: older buildings that are quite nice if you don't look at all of the stories at the same time, because taking in the whole enchilada means you'll see what looks like a normal home on the top two floors being attacked by some sort of circa-1983 "embellishment" (I use the term loosely) on the ground floor, or vice versa. You'd almost think it had been an accident if it didn't keep happening. Note to building owners here: Edwardian and Miami Vice do not play well together.
It was while contemplating this collective architectural mess that I came to the intersection of Monterey and Montecito. Due quite possibly to laziness--Montecito went downhill, where anything toward Mt. Davidson would go, yes, uphill--but also to the siren song of the cottage-like house on the corner, I decided to alter my course.
And, well, holy hell if I didn't walk straight into some other time and place altogether. It was almost as if someone had pulled down a new scenery scrim the moment I crossed Monterey, and all of the sudden here I was in Middle America, or some British suburb somewhere, or a California town from many miles and many years ago. I was delighted.
Where Montecito hit Northwood, I sat on a bench in a mini park and took the photo above (which actually shows Ingleside, not Westwood, and therefore doesn't do the latter neighborhood justice). I could hear geese honking somewhere, the whir of BART in the distance, what sounded like skeet shooting (or, who knows, plain old shooting) somewhere far off. As I walked the looping streets of the neighborhood, I passed dog walkers, people unloading kids and gardening supplies from their cars, three young girls in bikinis having a water balloon fight, a guy pulling weeds from his front yard. The houses were adorable, the gardens in front of them crazy riots of spring growth and color. There were porches! There were driveways! There were front yards! I fell crazily in love.
It helped that, over the course of the hour or so I spent gamboling about in Westwood, what had been a cloudy and cool day turned bright blue and warm. By the time I finally finished as much as my legs would allow in this little enclave and headed out to Ocean Avenue, I was on a serious (and somewhat insane) natural high. Only as I started to fatigue while walking toward the Balboa Park station did I come down a bit.
But not for long: as I trudged over the 280 overpass, I thought I heard my name, and--deus ex machina!--I turned to see Dana and Brad waiting at the light. They'd been at a barbecue in Ingleside, had just been talking about how my project would require me to walk ignoble stretches like this particular bit of Ocean, and voila, there I appeared.
And voila! There I got into Brad's car just in time for the light to change and gratefully accepted a ride home, bubbling the whole way.
1 comment:
Hello from another person who is trying to walk all of San Francisco! I'm really impressed that you're trying to do it all in a year.
http://enf.livejournal.com
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